Rainbow Dash wiped the sweat from her brow, debating whether or not she should unwrap the tablecloth carrying her things and use it as a way of blocking the sun. She had run out of bits a few days earlier, and so all she’d have to carry with her would be the picture. She decided against it for now, opting to shade her head as best she could with her natural wing. The sunlight streamed through the prosthetic, tinting it myriad rainbow colors.

Around her, the seemingly endless farmsteads of Equestria’s heartland stretched out to all horizons. She could make out a few farmhouses and barns in the distance, but for the most part it was fields and fields of crops. She supposed she at least wouldn’t go hungry, but it wasn’t exactly like the sorts of crops on display here were going to go down easy without any cleaning up or proper preparation, neither of which she knew how to do.

Her meals at Firefly’s had consisted mostly of prepackaged foodstuffs bought from the Ponyville grocer. She’d never thought she’d think this, but her stomach grumbled at the memory of the mass-produced generic brands.

Even the pegasi cloud villas dotting the sky above were few and far between. From what she’d gathered from the one town she’d passed through, most pegasi out here were either crop dusters or provided rainwater for the farmlands. There wasn’t a whole lot one could do out here beyond farming.

“What I wouldn’t give for an arcade or a pizza joint,” Rainbow Dash murmured to herself. “Or even better, two-in-one.”

The Ponyville Pizzeria, one of the few places of which she had any fond memories back in that hick town, had had an eclectic collection of titles. She’d even managed to play a few games with the other schoolkids now and then, when they were feeling generous enough and didn’t think any of their cooler friends were around to see.

That’s probably the one thing I’ll miss most, Rainbow Dash thought to herself. Pizza and video games.

Her stomach rumbled again.

“You shut up,” she growled at it. “We’re not near anywhere with food worth eating, and we won’t be for Celestia knows how long, so just deal with it.”

Once again, Rainbow Dash was faced with the frightening prospect of where exactly she might end up. When she’d left Firefly’s, it had been because she’d had enough and just wanted to be gone, no matter where going away took her. Now that that step was out of the way, though, she wondered if anyplace would ever really feel like home ever again. What if some new town or even city turned out to be just as dreary and alienating as Ponyville? What if the sort of life she’d had was the best she was ever going to get?

Rainbow Dash shook her head, refusing to dwell on that. As long as she kept putting one hoof in front of the other, everything would be fine. She believed that. She had to believe it.

Every once in a while, a few earth ponies from the nearby farms would gallop by, pulling wagons full of produce towards whatever passed for a town in this part of the country. She’d stick out her hoof, not really expecting them to pick up hitchhikers, and every time she’d been right. A few would even shout things like, “You got wings, don’t ya? Why don’t you use ‘em?”

She would if she could. The sun may have been up, but when she’d flown yesterday and a storm blew up unexpectedly, she’d been sent tumbling to the ground. Rainbow Dash glanced with a wince at her unnaturally bent prosthetic. It looked fixable, if anypony knew what they were doing, but she certainly didn’t. She didn’t think any hospital for miles would have any idea how to fix it either, not that she could pay them anyway.

Thus, she walked.

A few hours later, the sun was directly overhead, beating down without mercy. Her good wing felt hot and almost painful from having been used as an impromptu umbrella almost from the moment she woke up beside the road that morning. Sighing, Rainbow Dash lowered it, feeling her muscles experience a stretch of relief. That didn’t solve her sun problem, though, or the fact that she hadn’t had a drink in hours, not since she’d snuck a few gulps from a farmstead water pump.

“Is it really worth it?” Rainbow Dash asked herself as she looked around at the few farmhouses. If Firefly had sent out an alert, then Rainbow Dash’s face could be all over milk cartons everywhere by now. Asking for help could just get her recognized and sent back to the one place she never wanted to see again.

Her stomach grumbled again, however, and her throat continued to feel unpleasantly hot.

Hoping she wasn’t making a huge mistake, Rainbow Dash turned to the nearest farm. Mostly, the crops out here were sprawling fields of wheat, corn, or any number of other things that required a lot of care and knowhow to make worth eating. However, it seemed she’d stumbled across something that required far less preparation.

Rainbow Dash licked her lips, hardly believing her luck. Maybe she didn’t need to ask for help after all. Who would notice if she nicked a few apples, just enough to stuff her sack full and be on her way?

Checking to make sure nopony else was in sight, Rainbow hopped the fence and landed on what looked to be a rather large apple orchard. These were the only trees she’d seen for miles, and the blessed feeling of walking under their shade was almost as good as the prospect of picking a few of their delectable-looking fruit.

Rainbow double-checked again, but still, nopony seemed to be around. There was an old farmhouse and a barn a few hundred yards into the orchard, connected to the main road by a winding dirt driveway. She couldn’t spy any wagons; perhaps whoever lived here had gone off to market?

Finding a cluster of trees that seemed to offer the best obscuration from the farmhouse, Rainbow Dash spread her wings and, flapping naturally with one and with the other as best she could, she climbed up the trunk and nestled herself in the crook at the top. The bark was hard and scratchy, but a few packed leaves too care of that. She wedged her bat and sack in some nearby branches, picked a few apples, had a long overdue meal, and breathed her first sigh of contentment since she left.

Maybe this life on the road wouldn’t be so bad after all. The sunlight streamed through tiny windows between the leafy branches overhead, creating a gentle, green aura, but most of the area was well-shielded from the harsh heat of the sun. Before she knew it, Rainbow Dash blinked her eyes a few times, yawned, and settled in to sleep.

. . .

Rainbow Dash awoke to a pounding head, a tightness in her chest, and a hazy blur of lights and hissed whispers. She shook her head, trying to dispel the bleariness in her eyes, but that only made the ringing in her ears all the worse.

“Bad apples,” she murmured.

“What in tarnation?” asked a young mare’s voice with a deep, country drawl. Rainbow Dash’s vision was swimming, but blobs of oranges and browns and greens were slowly coming into focus as she looked up. The colors matched with each other, snapping into place to form a mare about her own age, though far more solidly built and, from the looks of it, much stronger. She had an orange coat, leafy-green eyes, and was wearing an old-fashioned cowgirl’s hat atop her shaggy blonde mane.

The mare was staring at Rainbow Dash with her brow furrowed, her lids lowered. She stomped the ground, hard, drawing Rainbow’s attention to the fact that she was wearing rubber boots several sizes too large for her.

“Do Ah need to repeat mahself?” the mare demanded. “What in tarnation?”

Rainbow Dash shook her head once more, the ringing mostly gone, as she opened her mouth to speak. She had been about to apologize for stealing the apples and intent on explaining her runaway situation as best she could, but her voice caught in her throat. It was hard to breathe. A quick look down at herself revealed why.

She was bound to the trunk of an apple tree, the biggest and thickest she’d seen in the orchard, and probably in her life. Thick vines kept her back straight against the bark, her prosthetic awkwardly sticking out and her good wing uncomfortably stuffed beneath the bindings.

Rainbow’s eyes widened, and her breathing came more quickly. She began to struggle, coughing and trying to demand release, but the bindings were too tight. She looked around wildly. This wasn’t the tree in which she’d fallen asleep, or even the same part of the orchard. The farmhouse was a short way off in front of her, and she appeared to be in a rough circle of the oddest-looking apple trees she’d ever seen.

The one against which she was bound had oddly reddish bark, its leaves a strange, almost autumnal shade of yellow-orange. The apples were humongous, ripe green globes. Beyond and to either side of the cowgirl mare were two equally-oddly colored trees that were almost, but not quite, as large as the one to which Rainbow Dash was lashed. Directly behind the cowgirl mare was a withered, small, yet seemingly incredibly ancient-looking tree, its bark and prune-like apples a youthful green despite its crooked and weathered appearance.

“Ah said,” the cowgirl mare spoke menacingly. “What in tarnation?”

Rainbow Dash tried to speak, to shout, but it was too hard to breathe, and her panic certainly wasn’t helping. She felt lightheaded, threatening to pass out.

“Gosh-darn it,” the cowgirl mare snarled. “First she goes snoopin’ around and stealin’ our apples, and then don’t have no common courtesy to answer a simple question!”

Rainbow glared at the mare. Had she knocked Rainbow on the head to keep the pegasus unconscious when she caught trespasser, and then tied her up here in the back of the house, where nopony was likely to see or hear her? Why hadn’t she just thrown Rainbow Dash out onto the street?

“What’s that?” the cowgirl mare asked, not looking at Rainbow but at the tree behind her. “Oh, that might be it. Sure, loosen her up a bit.”

Huh?

Air came flooding back into Rainbow’s lungs as the vines amazingly, yet impossibly, loosened themselves around her. Just enough to allow her room to breathe, but still too tight to allow her to escape, no matter how much she struggled.

“Let me out!” Rainbow shouted. “Help! Some crazy pony has me as prisoner!”

“Quiet!” the other mare demanded, smashing her booted hoof once more on the ground. Rainbow noticed that it didn’t quite sound like a boot or a hoof when it struck. “Ah ain’t no crazy pony! You done trespassed on mah property, stole mah apples, and ya’ think you’re the victim?”

“Stealing is wrong, yeah, I get it, yadda, yadda, yadda,” Rainbow Dash said, rolling her eyes and trying to sound more nonchalant than she felt. “But not all of us have property or a house or a warm bed or food, so I figured you could spare some!”

“Why you good fer nothin’—”

The mare stopped her sentence abruptly, perking her ears up once more.

“Aw, really?” she whined, turning around to face the three apple trees behind her. “Come on, Granny Smith, if she wanted charity, she shoulda’ used her manners and asked us proper at the farmhouse instead of stealin’!”

“You talk to apples?” Rainbow asked, raising an eyebrow and feeling that nervousness wellinig in the pit of her stomach. Hopefully this wasn’t the only pony living on this farm. If she was... Well, Rainbow had heard plenty of stories about what crazy ponies could do. The horror stories ponies had whispered about the rumors of what went on at the asylum just outside Ponyville were the stuff of local legend.

“Ah do not talk to apples!” the mare spat. “Er, I guess I talk to Apples... But it’s not the same thing!”

Rainbow’s ears drooped. This was bad, and she feared it could get a lot worse. Craning her neck, she could see a pitchfork leaning against the farmhouse, right next to a suspiciously sharp-looking shovel. And then, there was the patch of freshly dug dirt nearby.

Rainbow’s eyes widened all the further, and her heart started racing all over again. She was on the verge of hyperventilation.

“Don’t kill me!” she pleaded. “I’m sorry I took your apples, just let me go, I won’t tell anypony about you, I swear!”

“Kill ya’?” the mare said. “Why in tarnation would Ah kill ya’? What’s that, Mama? You too? Well, if you and Granny and Daddy all agree, Ah ain’t gonna argue with ya’. Let her loose, Big Mac.”

The vines loosened and unwound themselves from Rainbow Dash, letting her fall to the ground. The vines retracted, pulling themselves back into the leafy expanse in the branches far above. Since when did apple trees have vines, much less respond to pony speech? What was going on?!

“A’course, mah family and Ah would appreciate it if ya’ did keep silent ‘bout this place,” the mare said, offering Rainbow Dash a booted hoof to help her up. “Sorry Ah acted so harshly. If ya' really was desperate fer food, Ah suppose we could surely spare a few apples.”

Rainbow looked up with a glare, spreading her wings as best she could. Her good wing was sore, and the prosthetic was even more bent than it had been.

“I’ll be leaving now,” Rainbow said. “Good luck with being crazy, and whatever else is going on here!”

She picked herself up and turned to trot away.

“Now wait just a gosh-darn minute, the least—” the mare said, putting a booted hoof on Rainbow Dash’s shoulder. Rainbow pulled away, and inadvertently pulled the boot with her. It plopped to the ground, and Rainbow glanced back, only to scream all over again. This mare wasn’t just crazy, it seemed. She wasn’t even a pony.

The mare’s head and torso were perfectly normal, but her suddenly bare foreleg shifted from a coat of pony fur into hard, gnarled, grooved bark the further down the leg Rainbow’s terrified eyes looked, seeing the whole thing terminate in a wriggling, writhing mass of twisting vine-like roots.

Rainbow stumbled backwards.

“Ah can explain,” the mare said hastily. “Please don’t—”

Rainbow picked herself up as quickly as she could and turned to gallop. Something snagged her tail, lifting her up in the air and setting her gently down in the center of the ring of strange apple trees. Upside-down, Rainbow saw the mare’s tree-like foreleg had grown out into a full branch, its finger-like roots curled around Rainbow’s tail. The moment Rainbow fell to the ground, more roots burst from the earth and ensnared her, holding her still.

“Get away from me!” Rainbow Dash yelled. “I’ll fight you! Let me out of here and—”

“Fer the love of Celestia on high, would ya’ please shut up fer one gosh-darn minute?” the mare huffed. “Ah don’t know what you’re all uppity about, bein’ you have that there fake wing. Ah’m not so different.”

Rainbow Dash tried to calm her breathing, but the trees made no further move to attack her. The mare’s branch was retracting back to its former length, and she stuffed it awkwardly back into her oversized boot.

“My wing was torn off by a batpony soldier when I was a filly,” Rainbow Dash said, not seeing the similarity in the slightest. “This is a prosthetic. Some rich doctor made it for me. How are you... Are you a tree, or a pony?”

The mare smiled sadly.

“Both, Ah suppose,” she said. “Ah’ll explain everythin’, if ya' swear yourself to secrecy. Then, and only then, Ah’ll send ya’ on your merry way. Deal?”

Rainbow Dash didn’t see many alternative options, but she’d be lying if she told herself her curiosity wasn’t dying to know. She nodded, holding out a hoof.

“Deal,” she said.

The mare smiled genuinely and shook Rainbow’s hoof with her boot. Rainbow tried not to shudder at the sensation of the roots behind the rubber.

“Ah’m Applejack, by the way,” the mare introduced herself.

“Rainbow Dash.”

“Nice ta’ meet ya’, Rainbow.”

“You too,” Rainbow said, trying to sound convincing.

“A whole long time ago, mah family had an orchard on the outskirts of a little town way east of here called Ponyville,” Applejack explained.

Seeing the glint of recognition in Rainbow’s eyes, she asked, “Ya’ heard of it?”

“I’m running away from it,” Rainbow replied. “My mom lives there. I hope I never go back.”

Applejack looked a tad curious herself, but didn’t press the issue.

“Mah family had lived on that apple orchard fer generations,” she went on. “Before that, the Apple family was always travellin’ across Equestria , lookin’ fer the best place to grow apples. It wasn’t easy. They say the starfalls were more frequent long ago.”

Rainbow Dash did shudder at the mention of those cursed events.

“Sorry,” Applejack said, seeing Rainbow’s discomfort. “Ya’ mentioned you’d had a run in with a batpony soldier. My condolences.”

“Thanks,” Rainbow Dash said, nodding with a small smile.

“Eventually, the Apples had found the fertile soil outside Ponyville,” Applejack continued. “It bein’ so close to the magic of the Everfree Forest made it the best place we’d ever found to grow apples. The Apple family set up shop and stayed there for ages, passing the farm along from parent to foal, over and over.

“We never planned to leave,” she said. “But one night, a long time before I was born, a starfall happened right in Ponyville. The whole place was ablaze. It weren’t enough that them darn batpony soldiers went round killin’ and burnin’ the place, they spread that white dust of theirs, that stuff what makes plants die.”

Rainbow Dash nodded, remembering the lessons from school about moondust. Apparently, when the Lunar forces targeted farmlands, they spread as much dust as they were able to bring with them in an attempt to damage the surface’s crop supply.

“Our family’s farm, Sweet Apple Acres, was ruined,” Applejack said. “We shoulda’ just up and left fer a new place to grow apples, but mah grandma was a stubborn mare.”

Rainbow Dash could’ve sworn she saw the withered old apple tree behind Applejack shake more than the wind should have permitted.

“She went into the Everfree Forest to try and find a way to make its magic turn the soil fertile again,” Applejack said. “She went deep, deep into the woods, and came across... Somethin’. Ah don’t rightly know what it was, because she won’t never tell me.”

“She’s still alive?” Rainbow asked.

“Sure is,” Applejack said. “Mah grandma, Granny Smith, she made some sort of deal with whatever that thing was, that spirit of the Everfree. The land became fertile again overnight. Every farm near Ponyville was ruined, but Sweet Apple Acres stayed in business. The town depended on us. We were richer than any farmpony has probably ever been, then or since.

“But the deal,” Applejack sighed. “Came with a cost. It started slow-like at first. Granny Smith hardly noticed it for a good long while, but she started spendin’ longer and longer in the sun. It made her feel good, she said. Made her feel young. She got slower, too. The family grew up and aged around her. New blood came, married into the Apples. My parents, my big brother, they noticed strange things goin’ on with Granny Smith, but they figured she was just gettin’ old.

“One night, Granny didn’t come home from her walk,” Applejack continued. “They searched the whole farm, but they didn’t find her till the next mornin’. She was out in one of the fields, and her hooves were stuck in the soil. She spoke real slow-like, and could hardly move. Said she couldn’t pull herself out. Mah Mama and Papa and big brother tried their best to pull her out, but Granny Smith howled in pain. She said to leave her alone, to let her drink in the soil and sun. They stayed with her as best they could, takin’ turns. But Granny Smith just got worse and worse.

Rainbow Dash blinked, giving the withered old apple tree a weary glance.

“She started sproutin’ leaves,” Applejack went on. “Then we figured out what was happenin’. Her skin hardened like bark, and she grew and twisted. Before too long, she was just another apple tree in the orchard.”

Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened, looking at the withered tree fearfully now.

“Yeah...” Applejack said, smiling sadly once more. “Say hello to Granny Smith.”

“H-hello,” Rainbow said.

One of the branches moved, bending unnaturally in what might have been wave.

Rainbow Dash flinched.

“Don’t worry none, she won’t hurt ya’,” Applejack promised. “It wasn’t too long after that the other Apples noticed they was feelin’ strange too. They couldn’t rightly stay in Ponyville. The townsfolk might be after their blood if they ever found out what happened, or simply think the Apple family ran off one day and cut down the trees they’d become. So, they sold the land and moved way out here, where nopony would bother us.”

“So... These trees...” Rainbow said, shaking a bit as she looked down at the roots holding her and then at the trees all around. “They’re your family?”

“Eeyup,” Applejack answered. “It got slower after Granny Smith, but it didn’t stop. Mama and Papa had me just before they started turnin’. Ah only remember bits and pieces of ‘em before they became like this. Mah brother Big Macintosh raised me as best he could, before he turned too. Someday, Ah’ll also turn. It’ll probably take a few years, but it’s slowly creepin’ on me even now, as you’ve seen.”

“How do you live like this?” Rainbow asked, aghast.

“Ah handle the family business fer the most part,” Applejack responded. “Ah send a messenger hawk into town when we have a harvest to sell, and locals come round to sell it for us, givin’ us a share of the profit. We don’t need much to live; we got most of what we need right here.”

“No, I mean, knowing that someday...” Rainbow Dash said, looking back at the trees. “I mean, no offense, Mister and Misses Trees, but...”

Rainbow could have sworn she heard gentle chuckling as the breeze blew through the leaves.

“It’s all Ah’ve ever known,” Applejack said. “Ah knew Ah’d turn from the moment Ah was old enough to understand. It’s just life. The Apple family will still carry on, in a way. Just a few years ago, Mama bore a seed. Ah planted it in that there patch of fresh dirt over yonder, and it grew into mah baby sister. Sorta’ like turnin’, but in reverse. Ah reckon she’ll turn back herself when she gets old enough, but Ah’ll look after Apple Bloom just like Big Mac looked after me. All the Apple family's got is one another.”

The roots slithered away from Rainbow Dash, releasing her. She stood up, rubbing the sore spots where the roots had stuck tight, but she was unharmed. Though she wasn’t quite sure what she felt towards Applejack now, it certainly wasn’t the terrible fear it had been. If anything, most ironically, it was a form of pity.

“So you’ll keep this a secret?” Applejack asked pleadingly.

Rainbow Dash nodded, pantomiming zipping her mouth shut.

“Thank ya’ kindly,” Applejack said. “Say, ya’ said ya' was on the road. Why don’t ya’ spend the night? Ah can send a messenger hawk in the mornin’ and have the locals bring ya’ into town with the next apple shipment.”

“That would be... Amazing,” Rainbow Dash said. “You’d really be okay with that?”

“Sure, why not?” Applejack said, motioning for Rainbow to follow her. The mare who wasn’t quite a mare lead Rainbow Dash inside. The house was surprisingly more full of bric-a-brac than Rainbow had expected, most of it very, very old, and almost all of it undusted, but it had a sort of rustic, homey feel.

“Ya’ can sleep in mah room,” Applejack said, gesturing upstairs. “Ah don’t use it no more. Mind you don’t wake Apple Bloom, though.”

Rainbow nodded and thanked her, feeling... Odd. This sort of trusting openness, this honesty, was new to her.

Rainbow Dash trotted upstairs and found Applejack’s room easily enough, plopping down on the bed. It felt amazingly comfortable, even moreso than a cloud. Exhausted in mind as well as body, she quickly drifted off to sleep.

. . .

Rainbow Dash awoke to a harsh, urgent knocking sound. Shaking as much of the sleep-funk from her brain as she could, she slid groggily out of bed and opened the door to the bedroom. Nopony was there, but the knocking persisted. She trotted downstairs, passing the only other door upstairs from where she could hear a filly’s gentle snoring.

“Applejack?” Rainbow called out, to no response. She looked out the back window as the persistent knocking continued, but the half-tree mare was nowhere in sight, not even in the circle of her fully-tree elder family.

Not knowing what else to do, Rainbow Dash walked to the front door and peered out the peephole. She saw nopony, just the apple orchard on either side of a dirt road driveway.

She opened the door.

“What’s going on?” she asked, poking her head out.

Two ponies she hadn’t seen, both wearing dark, silken suits emblazoned with the insignia of the crown, stepped inwards from where they must have been hiding on either side of the door. Both large, powerful stallions, they grabbed her and hauled her inside, setting her down roughly even as she struggled and called out.

“Rainbow Dash,” said one without emotion. She glared up at him from where she’d been placed on the floor, rubbing her sore behind. “We are most glad we’ve found you.”

“I’m not going back with you!” she shouted.

“We’re afraid that’s not up for negotiation,” said the other, equally stoic.

Rainbow Dash made a break for it, but they caught her, holding on to her tightly.

“I’m not going back to Firefly!” Rainbow snarled, still fighting furiously.

“We’re not taking you back to your mother,” said the first, stopping her fighting instantly.

“You’re not?”

“No,” he affirmed. “We’ve been sent to collect you by direct order of Her Majesty Princess Celestia herself. We’ve already lost too much time looking for you. We need to return to Canterlot immediately. The very fate of Equestria depends on it. Depends on you.”